simplicity
by SakuraPetal91
Summary: Sometimes the simplest of days end up being the most interesting. Keith is not quick to disagree. [Rated T for some swearing]


"What the fuck, Lance."

It was a nice, peaceful day. No Galra attacks, no extra training, no weird Altean paladin bonding exercises, or false emergency alarms. It was the best time for Keith to just sit back, relax and doodle on his sketchbook.

He missed doodling everyday. He used to, in his shack in the desert back on Earth. He doodled cactuses, his things, people he remembered...

Now though, he only had a couple of hours until something happened. His doodles used to be happier, but he's been so stressed lately that he only drew a few things, and a bad interpretation of Zarkon and another Galra whose name he can't remember for the love of everything holy.

Seeing as this was such an opportunity to doodle, Keith's plan was to lock himself up in his room and doodle all day. He had so many ideas...

...but then of course Lance had to barge in his room and come up with a question _so_ out of the **blue** that Keith wondered just how bored Lance might've been before he came.

"Do you think Zarkon has feelings?"

Of course Keith's answer was the classic WTF. He had... quite the potty mouth, after all. Thank God for Allura and Coran's unfamiliarity with Earth slang.

Lance's response was a scree that rivaled the mice's squeaking. The boy went into a defensive pose.

"What?! It's relevant!"

"No," Keith deadpanned. "No, it's not. It would probably make it harder for us to ever fight him if we thought about what he was feeling."

Lance crossed his arms and looked away, still not happy with the answer he got.

"But do you think he has feelings or not?" he muttered.

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose. Why can't he have one peaceful day...

"I believe that any sentient creature in any corner of the multiverse has feelings. Zarkon just... has very, _very_ twisted feelings. Or, more like a lack of good feelings and an overwhelming amount of bad feelings-"

"Enough with the philosophy, a simple yes would've sufficed!" Lance exclaimed, putting his hands on Keith's shoulders.

"Knowing you? Probably not."

Lance rolled his eyes with a half-smile and bowed down in a sarcastic manner, before leaving as abruptly as he came.

Keith sighed contently at the regained quietness in his room and flopped on his bed, taking the one pen he had and doodling on his sketchbook.

The end result of the first doodle was Lance. Not unusual, since he just saw him, so it was easier to draw something you just saw than it was remembering far away details about people he last met years ago.

Keith cracked his knuckles preparing for another doodle when someone barged in his room again. Being in bed, his hand unconsciously went under his pillow for his knife as he quickly turned around...

...and was met with Lance's blue eyes again. Seriously.

Keith retreated his hand from under the pillow and rubbed the sides of his face in disdain. What's a guy supposed to do to get some alone doodling time?

"What is it _now_ , Lance?" he sighed, and turned his view on the intruder.

Said intruder flushed and looked down at his fidgeting hands as he quickly muttered something.

"I will need you to be louder than that, Lance. I'm not breathing down your neck to be able to hear that one stutter of a sentence that you just burped," Keith deadpanned, staring dead straight into Lance's face.

Lance's face morphed into annoyance but bit back the arriving insult climbing up his vocal chords. After a couple more seconds in which Keith debated if he should just kick Lance out of his room already, Lance finally spitted his question out:

"Can I stay in your room pleaaase I'm so bored and everybody's busyyyy!" Lance yelled, practically throwing himself on the floor to beg him.

"...Wha...?"

" **Please, por favor, I beg you, I'm so bored!** " Lance continued to dramatically cry out, on the floor with a hand on his heart and looking like he was just shot.

Keith, for the second time this hour, pinched the bridge of his nose. Oh fuck, this was gonna be a long day.

"Okay, you can stay here, you can stop acting like you're in a Shakespearean play already!" Keith groaned and rose from his bed to offer Lance his hand, which he gladly took and gracefully pirouetted back on his feet.

Keith rolled his eyes at Lance's constant drama and flopped back on his bed, picking up his forgotten pen and opening his sketchbook back where he left it. He started drawing a line, and another, and another, and the strange blob he was doodling became a Pidge. He was thinking of drawing Hunk next when he felt someone's breathing above him. Looking up, he was met with uncomfortably close blue eyes.

Lance retreated with a moment's hesitance, his hands up in a defensive pose.

"Sorry, I was just curious, don't kill me!" he ranted with an enormously big ashamed grin on his face. Resting his hands on his face, he changed the grin into a strangely cat-like smirk. "I didn't know you could draw though!"

Keith smiled slightly and hummed, returning to his sketchbook to proceed with his idea in doodling Hunk. Lance was kneeling on the floor with his hands supporting his face as he watched like a little child to see how Keith was going to doodle, and Keith felt a pang of pity for him and shimmied over, patting the newly emptied space on his bed.

"You can sit on the bed, y'know? I'm not gonna stab you when you're not looking, in case that's what you're worried about," he joked with a small smile before returning to his sketchbook and already drawing.

Lance's face lit up in an instant as a happy, childishly charming toothy smile made its way onto his tanned face. He instantly jumped on the bed and scuttled close to Keith , looking over his shoulder and hair to see how Keith was building a body out of seemingly purposeless lines.

After a few comfortably silent minutes, Lance's face lit up again, this time in recognition.

"Oh! Oh! That's Hunk, isn't it?" he giddily asked, his legs going up and down in excitement.

Keith teared his eyes away from the sketchbook to see the adorably innocent sight and snorted, nodding in confirmation.

"Oh! Can you draw him with a lion?" Lance added, looking inspired, an ever-present content smile on his face.

"His lion or a random lion?"

Lance hesitated for a second, before humming. "His lion if he were a normal lion."

Keith shrugged and decided to go along with it. He always thought lions were cool so he had a basic idea and understanding of their shape and size in comparison with your average human. He even had some lion doodles from when he was back at the Garrison and everything was merry and space was a dream-

-okay dark thoughts, today is not the day.

Keith added a lion to his faceless Hunk, then put a fond expression on his face. Lance hummed in agreement.

"That is definitely my best friend," he smiled, and put his chin down on Keith's pillow.

Keith flopped around to stand on his back and threw a leg in the air, tapping the pen on his cheek, searching for an idea, anything. Lance looked at him for a while before doing the same thing, putting his arms under his head in a relaxed manner.

"Who did you draw so far from our team? Other than the gorgeousness that is Hunk, obviously," Lance curiously asked, leaning his head so that he can look at Keith.

Keith didn't face him, instead staring at the ceiling.

"I drew pretty much everyone. I drew Allura, Shiro, Coran, Pidge, you..." he started, but was interrupted by Lance's loud inhuman shriek as he jolted up and turned to entirely face Keith.

"You drew me?! _Where, I wanna seeeee!_ "

Keith sighed, but took the sketchbook from under his head and passed it to Lance, absentmindedly playing with his pen as he moved to face Lance as well.

"You can flip through it if you want, I don't have any ideas right now anyways," he shrugged and rested his head on his pillow, one leg up and the other stretched as far as he could stretch it, one arm extended towards the abyss and the other tucked under his head.

Lance let out a high-pitched 'yay!' before taking the sketchbook and looking at it from its beginning, absentmindedly humming a random tune that Keith didn't bother to try to pinpoint. Sometimes Lance would stop and _really_ stare at some pages or doodles, sometimes even letting out a chuckle, at which Keith hoped it wasn't because he drew something that badly.

At a certain page, halfway to where Keith actually was in the sketchbook at the moment, Lance really stopped and stared, his humming stopping altogether. After a few silent moments, in which Keith watched him with burning curiosity, Lance burst out into loud laughter.

"What? What did I screw up?" Keith asked in a panicked tone, raising his head, trying to get a good view at what Lance was laughing at.

Still laughing, the boy held up the sketchbook page that caused his outburst, pointing to a specific drawing with a date on it.

Oh.

 _Oh no._

"I-Is this Iverson?" Lance stuttered through endless snorts and laughs, continuously pointing at the drawing.

Keith was on the verge of laughing himself, memories of that doodle's godly creation flooding his mind.

Lance slapped his knee and put a hand on Keith's shoulder for emotional and physical support as he painfully wheezed in another fit of laughter, while Keith started giggling himself.

It took them around 10 minutes to calm down, and even then they were still randomly giggling or snorting. Lance finally took a deep breath and put the sketchbook on the pillow so he could look at the drawing better, an amused smile still present on his face.

"No, but seriously, the added curly moustache makes it ten thousand times funnier, even with that expression _holy shit_ this is one amazing doodle."

Keith chuckled and hummed, resting his head on his hand as he fondly stared at the drawing.

"The moustache was actually Shiro's idea," he said with a smile. "I doodled Iverson out of spite with the strangest face I could think of for him, and Shiro saw me and said, 'this drawing is a moustache away from greatness, do not fail me Keith' and dramatically left the room."

Lance glanced up to meet Keith's eyes with a giggle. "Shiro actually thought of the moustache? Man, I would've never guessed it!"

"Shiro was one grand meme", Keith said, and reached to flip the pages of the sketchbook to another page. "This twisted drawing of a mermaid chinchilla was his idea as well. He wanted me to draw it in that one iconic Ariel pose, but I already was too far gone with the drawing to be able to change it up."

Lance giggled before his eyes widened in surprise and realization. "Wait, you and Shiro watched The Little Mermaid?"

Keith raised a curious eyebrow.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I?"

Lance waved a hand. "No offense, but it's such an old movie that I thought I was the only one that watched it from the team! A great movie nonetheless though."

"That's true, not many people actually know of The Little Mermaid or the old classics anymore," Keith hummed. His mouth then twisted into a pout. "Even less people heard about Mulan though..."

Lance's eyebrows raised up in surprise as he put a sudden hand on Keith's hand, startling Keith in the slightest. He leaned in slowly, maintaining eye contact with Keith. The mullet-bearing boy bit his lip in confusion, knitting his eyebrows together as he clenched his hand held by the unexpectedly chill and large tan hand of Lance.

"You watched Mulan?" Lance slowly whispered, blue eyes wide in expectation.

Keith nodded, a sudden burst of excitement rushing through him.

"I love that movie! It's one of the best, and the fighting and strategies were spot on, yet nobody seems to know about it!" Keith dramatically said, flopping back on his back with his face towards the ceiling, throwing his arms and the one leg up in the air in a drastic manner.

Lance heavily nodded in powerful agreement, doing the same, leaving Keith's hand to wipe invisible tears from his face.

"It's such a great movie, you're the first person I know that ever even heard of it..." Lance tragically whispered, putting a hand on his chest.

Keith rose on his butt and pulled on Lance's shirt in an impatient manner.

"Lance! Lance!"

Lance rose in the same manner, staring Keith dead in the eyes.

"What?"

Suspense. Keith wanted to add the same drama to his following question. He leaned closer, eyes sparkling with determination.

"What if we managed to get Pidge to find the movie?" he whispered with the most serious face he could muster. After all, this was a serious conversation.

Lance stood for a second, unblinking, before breaking into a huge smile and hugging Keith out of the blue.

" **Oh my God** Keith, you're my hero! That's such a great idea!"

Keith awkwardly but somehow happily wrapped his arms around Lance as well in response, resting his head on Lance's shoulder while Lance nuzzled his face in Keith's mullet.

They remained that way for a lot longer than necessary, Keith deemed, but it was comfortable and nice so he didn't really feel bothered.

After they pulled away, Lance grabbed Keith's shoulders and looked straight into his eyes, a slight flush on his cheeks.

"We're gonna ask Pidge later about Mulan! This is an urgent matter!"

Keith cocked his head to the side, impatient. "Why not now?"

A small voice in his mind, sounding annoyingly a lot like Shiro's, muttered, _'Patience yields focus, Keith.'_ Keith replied in his mind with a gracious 'shut the fuck up, this is Mulan we're talking about', before turning his attention back to Lance and away from his internal arguments.

"...Pidge basically threw me out of their near vicinity last time I asked for something, which was a few hours ago," Lance deadpanned, moving his hands from Keith's shoulders to his own knees.

Keith winced and hummed in agreement. Neither of them wanted Pidge's wrath upon them.

Wait.

That's it.

Inspiration struck like a lightning bolt as Keith grabbed his pen and flipped the pages back to where he last doodled Hunk with his normalized lion and immediately flopped on his belly, already sketching out the base lines. Lance let out a hum in acknowledgement and did the same, resting his face on his hands as he giddily watched Keith draw.

The excitement turned into laughter as soon as the ideas Keith had in mind let themselves unravel in front of Lance's eyes.

"Oh my God," he whispered, putting a hand on his mouth and gasping. "Is that... Pidge destroying us with lightning bolts?"

Keith hummed in happy agreement. "It's Pidge's wrath upon us."

Lance giggled childishly before crossing his arms on the pillow and resting his head on it.

They stood like this all day, Keith doodling and Lance throwing ideas left and right, up and down, and in whatever other direction possible. Keith was thankful for Lance's presence, for he had moments when inspiration _and_ determination decided to both leave his body in a rush to go on a never-ending vacation, before Lance grabbed them by the hoodie and shoved them right back where they needed to be.

At the end of the day, Keith filled 10 pages with doodles. The Castle let them know with a beep that it was sleep time, and the lights were turned off, so Keith could no longer doodle without damaging his eyes.

Lance let out a sad wail as he dramatically threw his arms up, and Keith winced as well. He was feeling too great to want to sleep.

He blinked, and barely managed to open his eyes again... Okay, so on a second thought, he might want to sleep. This was Lance's cue to leave, right?

Lance turned his head around to face Keith, and shimmied closer to him.

"...Hey, can I stay here for the night? I didn't make my bed and it's too dark to do that now..." he pitifully said, a sheepish smile on his face.

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose and scooted to make more space for Lance. After all, Keith was shorter than Lance, although not by long, he could spare Lance some extra space to move. He groggily picked up the blanket and draped it over them as Lance shedded his jacket, remaining in his blue and white shirt.

"Sure, you can stay," he mumbled sleepily, his eyes glueing on to one another as he put one arm under his head, the other clenched closely to his chest. "G'night."

Lance smiled and huddled next to Keith, arranging the blanket to fall on their shoulders better.

"Goodnight to you too, mullethead."

* * *

The next morning they woke up in a tangle of limbs, Lance having his arms draped around Keith's shoulders in a pose resembling hugging, while Keith was huddled as close as he could to Lance.

Keith found he wasn't as annoyed with this predicament as he expected himself to be.

Shiro's knowing smile when they were both late for breakfast wasn't something he was happy to meet though.


End file.
